Disneykid wrote: As for the shot where Aurora wakes up with blue eyes, we can say this is a result of the spell. Notice that Aurora's tiara whenever she's awake is completely gold. When she's asleep, though, it's embedded with rubies, which I believe are meant to represent blood drops. When she wakes up, the rubies are still on her tiara, so I can only assume her eyes were an after-effect of the spell (along with her tiara) and both went back to normal by the time she went downstairs to meet her parents.
Cursed Crown? Very interesting. You know, I've thought for a while that the red tear-drop shaped parts on Snow White's sleeves represented red blood from when her mother pricked her finger while sewing and wished for a child with lips as red as the blood from her finger. "Ouch! That f***in' hurt! I hope my child looks like that!" WTF?!
Anyway, I disagree about that cursed crown. Also notice that when Aurora is asleep, she's, well, motionless. And so is the crown. And it's much easier to put detail on something that doesn't move, because then you don't have to keep re-drawing that detail in every frame.
When tehe crown is first made, it's spinning, then it's being placed on her head, and it's still for an instant until Aurora starts to cry and puts her head down, making the crown move with it. Basically, the crown is always moving with her head as she moves, up the stairs, until finally she pricks her finger and stops moving. The first time the crown is jeweled is also the first time it's still, and it's not the only one getting detail. Aurora's all shaded and air-brushed (I actually read in an interview with Marc Davis he regretted the air-brushing) lying on the floor. So Aurora's getting shadow detail and the crown's getting jewel detail.
Then, Aurora's a cel again and not a background when the fairies put her to bed, but she's still still, so they only have to draw the detail once and that crown won't be moving. Then, we see Aurora as a detailed, shaded background again in Maleficent's vision she shows to Phillip, and naturally the crown is detailed with her, hence the jewels. And it's still.
Finally, the prince goes up to what I think is a background of Aurora, and when he kisses her and her eyes flutter...well, I know that there's a technique of making one background or even a cel of the part of a body that doesn't move, while multiple cels of the parts that do move are put on it. I don't know what's that called, but I sure it exists because Aurora is shaded and detailed (very evident in her collar) during that scene while her eyes flutter open. And once on The Simpsons it was obvious the technique existed when Homer's upper body didn't move while his face did. I don't know how to explain it, but I could tell his shoulders were static and they only created multiple frames for his face.
Anyway, to put it simply, when something moves, it's harder to keep re-drawing the detail, and still keep it looking nice. But if it's still, you can detail all you want. If something is still for a few frames, but will move later in that shot, it would be silly to detail it for the few frames it's not moving and then have to remove the detail when it does move. It's seriously a lot of jewels to be drawn perfectly in the same exact positions at different angles.
When I say still, I mean it's not going to move in the shot at all. That's why they can detail it all they want, because the many jewels won't be moving.
Also, the majority of the scenes where we see Aurora's crown jeweled are close-ups, would you agree? Well, maybe not close-ups, but she's never particularly far away when we see those jewels, so that could also explain it. Actually I lied, I think. When Maleficent says "here's your precious princess" she is kind of far away, but she's still all detailed(if you watch, it appears they did two differenty backgrounds for when the camera zooms in on Aurora, one where she's farther away and one close-up. The far away one complicates my "it's also detailed because it's close-up" theory). And when Phillip comes over to her from the stairs, she's far away. Is it jeweled there? If so, maybe it disproves my close-up theory, but if something's close-up it's easier to detail it than from far away.
Sorry this was so long about a crown!
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